


And They Shall Be One

by poetikat



Series: And Death Shall Have No Dominion [5]
Category: Glee
Genre: F/M, M/M, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-13
Updated: 2011-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetikat/pseuds/poetikat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the anniversary of the end of their lives back home, Kurt looks in the mirror and smiles.  Set eight months post epilogue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And They Shall Be One

As they round the corner and pass through the gate, gravel spraying up to pelt their ankles as they run, Kurt breaks apart from the group and dashes across the lawn to the door, Puck and Santana hot on his heels. He races up the steps and slaps the front door with an open hand. “Upstairs bathroom’s mine,” he pants as Santana and then Puck follow suit.

“Damn it,” Puck says, wiping sweat from his forehead. “I wanted that one.”

“I’m taking the downstairs bath, so you’ll have to suck it up and take the one in the outbuilding,” Santana says. She presses her hand against her chest and grins at Kurt. “Nice.”

“It’s my turn to steam up a bathroom,” Kurt says.

Dave and Lauren close the last few feet and join them on the narrow porch, the neck and armpits of Dave’s tee-shirt ringed with sweat and Lauren’s face bright red from exertion. “I get the upstairs one after whoever’s using it,” Dave says.

“I’ll try to be in and out as quickly as possible,” Kurt says. He opens the door and heads for the stairs, Dave trailing after him.

“Happy anniversary,” Dave says, voice heavy with sarcasm. “How do you want to celebrate?”

“I’m going to avoid the television, the internet, and the radio for the day,” Kurt says. “This isn’t some ‘solemn day of remembrance.’ It’s just another way for everyone who wasn’t there or didn’t lose their home to feel good about having the decency to give a shit.”

“Ah. Mm-hmm.”

“I know what that ‘ah’ means,” Kurt says. It’s Dave’s subtle acknowledgment of his moods. He’s unhappy? He’s anxious? He’s mad enough to swear? Dave says “Ah,” and reacts in exactly the way that Kurt needs him to.

“I know you do. And I agree with you,” Dave says. They reach the landing, and Dave gives him a gentle prod in the direction of his room. “Get your things and get clean. Sooner you do, the sooner I can, too.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” Kurt says. He ducks into his room and kicks off his sneakers before gathering up the neatly folded outfit waiting for him on his bed, and with the bundle of clean clothes tucked under his sweaty arm he makes his way to the spacious bathroom on the opposite end of the hall.

He flips the lock and sets his clothes down on the lid of the toilet seat with a sigh of relief, stripping off his damp tee-shirt and shorts. He’s never beaten the others on their morning run before, and getting first shot at the hot water is something he’s been looking forward to for a few months now. The porcelain of the clawfoot tub is cold against his feet, as are the stainless steel knobs beneath his hands, and he closes his eyes at the sensation of touching something cool after being hot for so long. He turns the knobs, eyes still closed, and raises his head, letting the spray of water hit his face directly.

The anniversary – he’d forgotten. Rather, he’d been trying to forget. May 14th, 2011. The day it all changed. The day they lost everything.

And what’s the response from the world today? Documentaries on the news, articles in the newspapers, and a minute of silence from the governments.

They don’t know grief. Not on such a scale.

He soaks his hair thoroughly and works a generous dollop of the shampoo/conditioner that he, Dave, and Puck use through his hair. Kurt suspects that Puck and Dave were the type of guys who always used this sort of product before, but Kurt’s been thoroughly converted by its efficient properties. He ducks his head under the shower head and washes the suds out, watching them all circle down the drain, and scrubs at his scalp with his fingertips for good measure before picking up the bar of soap on the shower caddy and removing every trace of the run from his body.

First crack at the hot water doesn’t mean he’ll be selfish enough to use it up before Dave gets to use it, and he shuts off the water and pulls back the curtain, snagging the nearest towel to dry off before getting out. With a vigorous rub of the towel over his hair, he steps out onto the floor and gets dressed quickly. He wipes a hand across the fogged up mirror to finger comb his hair into order and stops abruptly.

Something’s different.

The same damp hair in disarray; the same face, still darker than before from extended exposure to the sun last year; the same wide mouth; the same lean strength he’s worked himself into through their constant runs; the same eyes –

No. Not the same. Older, yes. Serious, yes. Darker, yes. Reserved, yes. But there – right there, it’s gone. Today of all days, it’s gone.

The guilt is gone.

He shuts his eyes and turns over every emotion he’s feeling, the ones that thrum through his veins in reaction to new events and the ones that follow him around constantly every minute of every day, and yes. It’s not there. He opens his eyes again and looks in the mirror.

“Hi,” he whispers to his reflection. “It’s been a while.” The eyes in the mirror seem to brighten just a bit, and Kurt gives himself a smile.

That makes it time, then. But not yet, not right at this moment. It’s barely sunken in. But he will today. He promised Dave that he would.

He runs his fingers through his hair and leaves the bathroom on bare feet, wet footprints following him into the hall and down the stairs. Santana meets him in the hall, her hair twisted into a messy bun to keep it from dripping down her shirt. “Did you enjoy your victory shower?” she asks.

Kurt snags the strap on her tank top and reels her in, wrapping her in a tight hug. “I love you,” he says simply. “You’re incredible.”

She leans back to look at him, forehead wrinkled in concern. “I love you too. Is this about the anniversary? Because it’s really pissing me off that they’re doing all this memorial crap.”

“Honestly, no,” he says. “I think I’m okay.”

“Well, good.” She squeezes him around the middle and steps back. “Margaret moved breakfast outside this morning. We should probably grab our share before Titus drools on the plate.”

“I can’t stand that dog,” Kurt lies, and they stroll out the front door hand in hand to join Margaret, Sarah, and Puck on the front lawn.

They probably chalk it up to the anniversary that he’s quieter than usual while they lounge on the picnic blanket and eat their breakfast of French pastries and strong coffee. But he has three equally important thoughts to work his way through, and his silence has nothing to do with the day and everything to do with what he saw in the mirror.

**

By unspoken agreement, they’ve all decided to spend the entire day out in the sun, and at noon Kurt finds himself stretched out on the blanket on his back, propping himself up with his elbows and nibbling on a clementine. Santana and Lauren are playing Snap right by his side with a crisp new deck of cards, and Dave is play-wrestling with Titus on the lawn, crooning insults at the mastiff in a loving voice.

“Here it is!” Margaret says, hurrying down the steps and over to Puck, his guitar in her hands.

He reaches up to take it from her and runs his fingers over the richly colored walnut wood body before giving the strings a few experimental strums with a pick. “Thanks, Mom. Sarah?”

“Yeah?” she asks, bumping her shoulder against his. “What?”

“You want to?”

“Uh-huh.” She clears her throat and sits up straighter.

“Okay,” Puck says, looking around at their family. “I know we’re keeping it happy today, but me and Sarah have been practicing this together for a while, and we couldn’t think of a better time to sing it for you. So, here goes. Hope you like it.”

Lauren and Santana leave off tossing cards down and Dave lets go of Titus. They all look at Puck and Sarah expectantly.

Puck plays the first few soft chords, and Santana lets out a soft “Oh!” at the familiar tune. Everyone leans in intently to better hear it; even Kurt recognizes the song, albeit vaguely. He heard it on the radio frequently before.

Sarah’s sweet, untrained soprano blends perfectly with Puck’s mellow, smoky voice as they sing, almost gently, “I find a map and draw a straight line, over rivers, farms and state lines. The distance from ‘A’ to where you’d be, it’s only finger-lengths that I see. I touch the place where I’d find your face, my fingers in creases of distant dark spaces.”

Kurt lets his arms go slack and drops flat to the ground, watching the clouds scud across the sky as the song washes over him. A hand he’s less familiar with than Santana’s makes its way into his, and he interlocks his fingers with Lauren’s. She tightens her grip, and he aims a little smile at the cloud directly above his head.

This is their song. It’s Puck’s song, and Lauren and Sarah and Margaret’s song. It’s Kurt and Santana and Dave’s song. It’s the song of the eight hundred and seventy other people rescued from North and South America. It’s the song that makes Kurt pause for a moment when he thinks about how the unbelievable odds of reuniting with their friends almost makes him believe in miracles. It’s the one that makes his heart skip a beat to imagine what they went through before finding home. Before coming home to them.

“Your words in my memory are like music to me,” they sing softly, and then with more energy, “And miles from where you are, I lay down on the cold ground. I, I pray that something picks me up and sets me down in your warm arms.”

Kurt turns his head to the left and catches Dave watching him with the patient curiosity that Kurt’s grown to love seeing on his face. Dave raises an eyebrow at Kurt, and Kurt blinks slowly and shrugs as well as he can while lying down. “Later,” he mouths to Dave. Dave nods and returns to paying attention to Sarah and Puck.

Their voices are soft again, and they sing, “After I have travelled so far, we’d set the fire to the third bar. We’d share each other like an island, and exhausted close our eyelids. And dreaming pick up from the last place we left off. Your skin is weeping, a joy you can’t keep in.”

The clouds go wispy like cotton candy as Puck and Sarah sing the chorus again, and Kurt relaxes back into the blanket, feeling strangely at peace with the world. Beyond their gated haven, people are watching documentaries about what happened, hypnotized by the narrators recounting the story of their escape from the US for the thousandth time. They’re reading special editions in magazines and retrospectives in newspapers. The leaders of nations everywhere are giving emotional speeches to audiences who’ve never been and likely never will be refugees with no country to ever return to. But in here, he holds Lauren’s hand and smells the freshly cut grass and puts aside the anger of the morning in favor of thinking about Dave.

Does he love him? Of course he does. He loves Dave and Santana above all others, above even Lauren and Puck, above Sarah and Margaret. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he ever lost either one of them.

Is he in love with him? Kurt’s instinctive response is “I don’t know.” After all, he feels the same intense rush of emotions, the _careworryjoyprotectivenesswarmthdelightlovelovelove_ , when he thinks of Santana as he does when he thinks of Dave. They’re perfect equals in his eyes, and Santana, well – it’s unlikely that they’ll declare their undying romantic love for each other any time soon. Highly unlikely, given how incompatible they are as far as the physical side of things goes.

Perfect equals, yes, and yet Kurt finds himself wishing he were less reticent and more like Santana when it comes to displays of affection where Dave is concerned. He doesn’t want to continue to hold himself back. He wants to reach out and take Dave’s hand as often as he does with Santana, to laze about with his head in Dave’s lap or with Dave’s head in his lap as Santana does with him. He wants to run his fingers down Dave’s cheek and jaw to see if his skin is as soft as it looks, to stroke his hand down the back of his head to his neck and around to his collarbone in silent admiration of the strength that helped carry them so far –

Oh. Not like Santana, then. For a fleeting moment he wonders how he’d managed to miss this about himself, but it makes perfect sense to him in retrospect. He’s spent nearly nine months since they last talked about it burying it as deeply as possible and waiting for the day to arrive when he’d stop blaming himself for everything, whether it had been something he could have controlled or not. It was redirection, hiding his own thoughts from himself so thoroughly it almost impresses him.

Love, yes, and attraction, yes. And those overwhelming emotions – those aren’t just love. Love is never ‘just’ anything, of course, but those feelings aren’t entirely familial. He suspects that even if he wasn’t physically attracted to Dave he’d still be in love with him. Yes. Yes, he loves Dave and is in love with him in equal measure.

But if – oh. Again, oh. Startled, he lets go of Lauren’s hand and stares up at the sky with wide eyes. Now that, that had truly never crossed his mind. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly before setting it aside to think on it when the shock has worn off.

Lauren sticks her face in his line of sight. “Are you okay?” she asks, and at her question Kurt realizes that Puck and Sarah have stopped singing.

“I’m fine,” Kurt says. She frowns in concern, and he musters up a smile that he hopes doesn’t reveal anything he’s been thinking about. “Really, I’m fine. In fact,” he says, sitting up, “I’m doing great.”

She gives him a dubious look, but he smiles again, and she apparently takes his words at face value. “Good,” she says firmly. She gathers up the cards from her and Santana’s half-finished game and starts to put them back into a more orderly stack. “Want us to deal you in?”

He shakes his head and gets to his feet. “No,” he says. “I’m going to go read for a while. I need to think.”

“Come back out soon,” Margaret calls after him as he walks back to the house. “You don’t want to get lost in a book and miss dinner.”

“Don’t worry,” Santana says. “We’d haul him out of the library if he did.”

Kurt laughs under his breath as he closes the door behind him gently. He’s sure they would. But he has no intention of holing up in the library for the rest of the day. He doesn’t really need to think. He needs a distraction; he needs to not think about everything that’s filling up every corner of his mind. And he can’t count on that distraction when the objects of his contemplation are right in front of him, so settling in with Hume’s _A Treatise of Human Nature_ for a few hours seems like the ideal way to escape his thoughts for just long enough to make the decision that he and Dave have been building toward for far too long.

**

The horizon has already swallowed half of the sun by the time they finish eating dinner. Lauren pours everyone but Sarah another glass of the rosé that Margaret had put on their grocery list a few weeks ago to save for a worthwhile occasion. Sarah stacks the used plates into a neat pile and casts envious glances at the wine bottle whenever she thinks her mother isn’t looking.

“Five years,” Puck says, toasting her with his glass before taking a drink. “You can wait that long.”

“I’m impatient,” she says, and sticks her hand out for Puck’s glass. “It’s one of those things that happens when you’re related to someone whose name rhymes with Boa Duckerman.”

“One sip only,” Margaret says as Puck hands the glass to her. Sarah rolls her eyes but follows Margaret’s instructions, taking one long sip before passing it back to her brother.

“Hang in there, kiddo,” Santana says, tossing a well chewed tennis ball to Dave while doing her best to keep her glass from spilling. “Who knows, maybe by the time you’re eighteen we’ll feel like taking you bar hopping for your birthday.”

Dave catches the ball one-handed and spins awkwardly out of the way as Titus barrels toward him, holding his glass above his head. “If Margaret’s cool with it. Which I doubt.” He sends it flying back to Santana, taking a quick sip of wine once Titus turns and runs back to Santana.

“Believe me, I won’t be,” Margaret says.

“Quelle surprise,” Kurt comments. He takes a fortifying gulp of his wine, silently rebuking himself for not properly appreciating it as he should, and walks over to touch Dave lightly on the shoulder. “Hand Titus-teasing duty off to someone else,” he says quietly. “It’s time we talked.”

Dave nods. “Let Sarah take over,” he calls to Santana. She shrugs and tosses the tennis ball to Sarah, who lets out a little “eep!” when the dog that outweighs her by sixty pounds charges across the lawn directly at her.

“The garden,” Kurt says, and Dave silently follows him from the front lawn and around the side of the house to the garden in the back. Only when Kurt stops by the back door beneath the soft glow of the porch light does he speak up.

“Are we talking?” Dave asks. “Or are we _talking_?” He leans against the door casually, but his free hand, shoved awkwardly into his jeans pocket, gives away his uncertainty.

“We’re talking,” Kurt says, and joins him in leaning against the door, elbow propped against the handle and eyes fixed on Dave’s face.

“I don’t know where to start,” Dave confesses. “So I guess you should.”

“I’d planned to,” Kurt says, and takes a second to review the words he’d decided to say before beginning. “It’s not my fault that Mark Young turned into a zombie. It’s not my fault that Lou-Ann Baker died.”

Dave slowly takes his hand from his pocket. “Kurt –”

“I couldn’t have stopped my dad and Carole from turning into zombies, and it’s not my fault that I had to shoot what they turned into,” he continues. “It’s not my fault that Finn was bitten. I could have given him a choice about how to deal with it, but I did what I honestly thought would be the best thing. It’s not my fault that Blaine died, it’s not my fault that Mercedes died, and it’s not my fault that Brittany died. It’s not my fault that so many of our friends died or went missing. It’s not my fault that we don’t know what happened to Rachel and Mike and Tina and Leroy. It’s not my fault that the stranded couple we ran into weren’t prepared and probably died, and it isn’t my fault that the people who tried to rob us are probably dead as well. I still think that there are brilliant, kind, talented people who deserved to live. I’ll always think that. But I don’t think that I don’t deserve to have survived because of it. I deserve to live, and I should start letting myself have some of the happiness that I deserve, too.”

Dave reaches to the side blindly and sets his glass down on the porch rail, staring at Kurt with a combination of disbelief and hope that erases any insecurities he might have had that Dave had changed his mind. “You mean you’re actually – we’re really – are you –”

“I mean I’m actually,” Kurt says. “We’re really, I am. All of those.”

Dave laughs and tugs Kurt’s glass from his hand to set it by his own. “Sorry. I’m just kind of surprised. In a good way. In a really, really good way.”

“So am I,” Kurt says. “I didn’t think I’d be able to say any of that for a lot longer.”

“I know this is going to come out wrong, but is that it?” Dave asks. “I thought you’d want to talk about how things were between you and me before. That’s kind of huge.”

“It also stopped mattering right around the time we all stole a sailboat and crossed an ocean together,” Kurt says. “No. There’s nothing left to say that you don’t already know.”

Dave smiles. “Say it anyway?”

“I don’t tell you this nearly as often as I say it to Santana, but I love you. I can’t imagine a future without you in it. And –” Kurt pushes off from the door to stand toe to toe with Dave, close enough that he can pick out the dark flecks of gold in his green eyes in the dim light “– If there’s anything from before that needs to be addressed and corrected, it’s that I’m really, really attracted to you.”

“Yeah?” Dave hooks his fingers through the loops on Kurt’s jeans and tugs him closer. “That right?”

Kurt plants one hand on the door by Dave’s shoulder and slides the other behind his neck. “You, Dave Karofsky, are exactly my type.” And with that declaration, he pulls Dave’s head down the few inches separating their lips and claims a kiss that as early as yesterday he’d been unsure he’d ever be able to have.

His lips are soft, gentle, still a little wet from the wine they’ve been drinking, and the light, sweet smell of the rosé lingering on his breath is just as intoxicating as the wine itself. It would be so easy to lose himself in Dave and forget that there’s such a thing as the outside world, or even a world beyond the two of them, but a thought crosses his mind and he pulls back at the same time that Dave does. From the look in his eyes, Dave’s mind is running along the same track.

“Santana,” Dave says.

“This can’t hurt her,” Kurt says. “Even if she saw this coming long before we did. Did she ever tell you?”

“That she hoped we wouldn’t mind her sticking around if we did get together?” Dave says. “She told me. I told her it was a load of crap, but still. Do you think she still thinks like that?”

“I hope not,” Kurt says. “And if she does…this _can’t_ hurt her. If it does, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“I couldn’t either.” Dave releases his hold on Kurt’s belt loops and reaches up to run his thumbs, callused from gardening, across his cheekbones. “It complicates things.”

“Would you have it any other way?” Kurt asks.

“And lose Santana? Not a chance,” Dave says. He drops his gaze to the side and asks hesitantly, “Do you ever think about what you would do differently if you got the chance to go back to before and change things?”

“Sometimes,” Kurt says, “I think about trying to fix things, to save everyone, but I’d never be able to do it. If I could, I’d make sure they all knew how much I loved them. Why? What would you do?”

“I really wish I could do everything differently,” Dave says, so quietly Kurt has to strain to hear him. “I wish I could have just told you, and let Santana know she wasn’t alone, and you never would have left, and I wouldn’t have felt like such a shitty human being. But I think – I think I’d do it all exactly the same way all over again, because if any of it changed then maybe one of us wouldn’t have made it, or all of us wouldn’t have made it, and we definitely wouldn’t have all found each other and ended up here and safe and together the way we are now. Is that as bad as I feel like it is?”

“On the surface it sounds terrible,” Kurt says. “But you’re right. If even one thing in the past was different, none of us would be here, and I can’t blame you for thinking that. Not when I’d make the same choice.”

Dave looks back up with relief written all over his face. “That’s – okay. Good. And, um, Kurt. About Santana. I –”

“Me, too,” Kurt says, and Dave surprises him by managing to look even more relieved.

“Do you think we should –”

“I don’t know,” Kurt says. “I honestly don’t see it changing anything if we do. Not really.”

“It makes a difference,” Dave says. “It won’t hurt her. Not like this could.” He gestures to the small space between their bodies.

“We both know what she wants,” Kurt says. “Let’s wait, okay?”

“Okay,” Dave says. “We’ll wait.” He leans in to kiss Kurt again, only for them to break apart at Puck’s laughter.

“You assholes,” he says. “You just made me lose my bet. Thanks so much.”

Dave’s shoulders shake with silent laughter. “Who’d you lose to?”

“Lauren,” Puck says, sounding disgruntled. “I don’t even know what she’s going to make me do, but seriously, thanks so much. She’s too damn creative for her own good.”

“It’s your own fault for making a bet with an up and coming evil genius,” Kurt says.

“Yeah, yeah.” Puck takes a long drink of what Kurt assumes must be his third or fourth glass of wine and points at them. “You,” he says to Dave, “Treat my brother right. And _you_ ,” he says, shifting his focus to Kurt, “Don’t fuck things up with my brother. I don’t want to have to hurt either one of you. Got it?”

“That sounds incestuous,” Kurt tells him. “Just in case you weren’t aware.”

“So one of you can be my in-law,” Puck says. “Do rock-paper-scissors over it. I don’t care. If you’re not having sex with me, you’re family. Now come on, I’m going to see how far I can get before Mom realizes I’m singing ‘Sexual Healing.’”

“We can’t miss that,” Kurt says. He pulls away from Dave and picks up his glass. “Coming?” he asks, holding out his hand.

“I have to see this,” Dave says, and he takes Kurt’s hand with a small, private smile that warms him all the way down to his toes.

Kurt immediately seeks out Santana when they rejoin everyone on the front lawn. She’s looking for them as well, and she captures his gaze as soon as he spots her sitting cross-legged on the edge of the blanket. Her mouth curves up in a smile and her dark eyes fill with genuine warmth at the sight of their joined hands. But there’s something there that Kurt can’t quite put his finger on, and it bothers him more than he thought it would that he can’t read her completely for once. She makes a shooing motion at them, as if telling them to go enjoy themselves without her.

“Not a chance, Santana,” Kurt says, shaking his head at her.

“Like hell we will,” Dave adds.

They stroll across the lawn to where she’s sitting and drop down right beside her. Kurt presses a kiss to the side of her head and picks up her hand, idly playing with her thin fingers, and Dave tightens his hold on Kurt’s hand and stretches his legs out in front of him. Santana lays her head on his shoulder and hums along with the guitar as Puck plays “Sexual Healing.”

If someone had told him he’d find himself like this a year and a half ago, he would have laughed and laughed. If someone had said it a year ago he would have cried. But here he is now, with Dave on one side and Santana on the other. Everything in the garden was right, and easy, and true. And here on the lawn – Dave on one side, Santana on the other – this is right, and easy, and true, too. Right, and easy, and true, and nothing is out of place or missing.


End file.
